May 11, 2012

Lane Markings in the Rain?

Been away from here for a bit, doing the AJAC EcoRun, a demonstration of various fuel-efficient cars and driving techniques. Hope you've been following the event on wheels.ca - Jil McIntosh, Gary Grant and I were blogging on it throughout.

Some interesting results, including how perhaps the fastest, most powerful car in the entire fleet might also have been the most efficient!

Meanwhile, back at the ol' adobe hacienda...

If you've driven on the 401 recently - and if you live anywhere near the GTA, how could you not? - you've certainly seen the orange lane markings in the construction zones (Ontario has two seasons: 'winter' and 'construction'...).

But if you haven't driven in these zones on a rainy night, you might not know what these orange lane markings can do.

Practically glow in the dark, is what.

You know how white lane markings can often disappear? Worn out by too many cars, too many trucks, too many snowplows, whatever.

And when they file those off to put new temporary lane markings in during the construction, the old ones often somehow show through, especially on those rainy nights, making it really confusing.

I presume these orange ones are designed to eliminate that, because if you can't see where you're going with these things marking your way, then you probably shouldn't be driving at all.

Not sure whether it's just the colour, or whether they're made from some special material, or what.

All I know is - they're terrific.

The question that remains: if they work so well, why don't they make all lane markings like this?

Comments

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Try driving at night on B.C. Vancouver Island and Lower Mainland highways. They're paved with very smooth asphalt that turns into a black, featureless mirror when wet. Compounding this is B.C.'s transport ministry's complete inability to engineer a road surface that sheds water, guaranteeing inch-deep puddles (often in the left lane) after even a light sprinkle. Used to be a time when one could use the cats-eyes to determine lanes, but some genius got the idea to sink them below the road surface in ground-out divots, presumably because we cannot train snow-plough drivers to do their jobs more carefully. Driving in the rain in B.C. is hellish enough with the general incompetence of B.C. drivers, mqny of whom cannot seem to get their rear lights to work (large trucks are equally guilty) but at night it's even worse.

The orange lines are made of plastic and cost about 12$ a meter. Shiny because they're new and they have a higher retro-reflectivity than normal white plastic lines because they're temporary and they force you to pay attention.

Contact The International Municipal Signals Association for more mind numbing details.